


what i have shaped into a kind of life

by goodbyechunkylemonmilk



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, F/F, Family Issues, Gen, Rule 63, Sibling Bonding, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Witness Protection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-02-22 08:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13163412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodbyechunkylemonmilk/pseuds/goodbyechunkylemonmilk
Summary: While their new identities are being constructed, they end up crammed into a shitty little motel room carefully scrubbed of all identifying information and guarded by Marshals on either side. On day two, Ronan picks up the room phone and hears dead air. When she complains, Devin snaps, “Of course the phone’s turned off. That’s the whole point, Ronan; we can’t have any contact with anyone.”“Maybe I just wanted to call the front desk for more towels. Or order a pizza. Am I allowed to do that, Devin, or is it part of my personal hell that I have to starve?”Devin pinches the bridge of her nose. “We aren’t going to starve, Ronan. Please don’t be melodramatic. And you and I both know that you were going to call Gansey, which, by the way, is exactly why the phone is disconnected. Because of people like you, with no self-control, who would rather get their little sisters killed than go more than twenty-four hours without talking to their girlfriends.”Ronan can already tell that invoking Martha is going to be Devin's primary strategy for controlling her while they're in hiding, and she can already tell it's going to work every time.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter doesn't merit any particular warnings but the story as a whole will involve a Ronan-typical level of alcohol abuse.

It all starts with three missed calls from Devin, which is pretty much business as usual, and then a call for Ronan on Gansey’s phone, which isn’t. She’s been sitting on the floor next to Gansey’s bed watching her add to her model of Henrietta. They’re not talking, in something of a fight because Gansey still hasn’t adjusted to the more combative Ronan born of tragedy. Ronan could leave, and knows that she probably ought to, underline the reality of their new normal, but she hasn't quite gotten around to it.

“It’s Devin,” Gansey says, speaking for the first time in over two hours.

“Well, don’t fucking pick up.” Ronan focuses on trimming her pinky nail with her teeth. When Gansey answers, her voice crisp and professional, Ronan tears off the nail and laps up the bit of blood it leaves behind. “Fuck you.”

“Is she here?" Gansey glances at Ronan, wide-eyed, like she didn't really think her act of spite through. "No, um, she’s out. Can I take a message?” She goes silent for a long time, making faces that leave Ronan stifling laughter. There’s nothing like a mutual enemy to get her over being called an uptight bitch. Ronan just catches  _lying for her_ and  _important_  before Gansey says, “Yeah, okay,” and holds the phone out. “It’s for you. Seems important.” When Ronan sticks both hands behind her back, Gansey sighs and places the phone between them on the floor. “Devin, you’re on speaker.”

“Ronan, we need to talk.” Devin’s voice comes out crackly, Gansey’s thousand-dollar phone no match for the reception on the outskirts of town. “Right now. Martha is with me,” she says, with the smug confidence of someone playing a trump card. Martha says hello as cheerily as ever, incongruous with the careful, grim voice Devin has been using since their father died. “We’re parked outside. Come down.” Devin hangs up like there’s no doubt that Ronan will acquiesce, and there isn’t, not when Martha is waiting for her.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ronan groans, penned in by the dull, unfamiliar weight of responsibility. She wants to hit something. She wants to sneak out the back and disappear. She wants all of this to be happening to someone else.

Gansey doesn’t look up from where she’s mixing paints on a Styrofoam plate, aiming for the red-grey of Henrietta’s municipal buildings. “Should I expect you back tonight?”

“How the fuck should I know? You heard everything I did. Devin is on a power trip. She probably just wants an audience while she shits on Dad some more.  _Christ_.” Ronan leans out the window and spits in the general direction of Devin’s car.  She holds out for a couple of minutes, just long enough to hope she's made her point, and then leaves without saying anything.

Devin is alone in the front, the passenger side door popped open. Ronan slides into the back instead, elbowing Martha to get her to move over. She tries for a conspiratorial exchange of raised eyebrows, but Martha doesn’t look at her. “So what the fuck is this all about?”

Devin leans over and shuts the door left ajar. She doesn’t speak for a dozen miles. Ronan keeps count, punctuating each one with a more aggressive demand for an explanation. Devins’ fingers tighten on the steering wheel every time, until finally her knuckles have gone white and she snaps, “We don’t have time for one of your tantrums right now. We should have just left you.”

“Devin!” Martha exclaims, wounded in a way Ronan isn’t.

“I didn’t mean it.” Neither of them ever snaps at Martha, but Devin sounds like she’s on the verge.

“Leave me? What are you talking about?” Ronan asks. “Look, I’ve been really patient.” Devin scoffs, so Ronan repeats, louder, “ _Really_ patient, but if you’re going to kidnap me or something—”

“Don’t be stupid, Ronan. I was going to break the news to you gently, but fine. Some of Dad's enemies, maybe the people who killed him, are coming after us. Fortunately, I had some information to trade, and they’re putting us in witness protection until it’s over.” Devin makes eye contact with her in the rearview mirror. “Don’t freak out.”

That goes over about as well as expected, and Ronan is only stopped from leaping forward and getting her hands around Devin’s neck by Martha’s grabbing her arm. “Guys!” she whines. “Let’s not fight! We’re  _family_.”

Ronan settles back, arms crossed, itching for a more satisfactory resolution. “You could have told me,” she grumbles.

“And risked that little meltdown somewhere else? Risked you running off?" Devin finally takes an exit after having had her turn signal on for miles. “Containment is the name of the game, Ronan.”

“I didn’t get to—” Ronan catches herself before she can finish, “say goodbye.”

Devin laughs. “I just told you that what happened to Dad might happen to us, and you’re upset that you didn’t get to weep into Gansey's arms?” Ronan digs her nails into the leather of her seat and bides her time, keeping her breath low and even until they pull into the parking lot of a U.S. Marshals field office. Then she's out of the car before either of her sisters and around to the driver’s side. She gets a hold of Devin’s collar and yanks her out, greeting her with a swift punch to the face.

It's satisfying, but it doesn't save her from what comes next, having the situation explained to her like she's an idiot by two dour men in suits, and then being locked away somewhere for safe keeping.

The whole thing is, in Ronan's opinion, a  _complete_  overreaction. All because someone has been sticking surveillance photos under Devin's windshield wiper—her at the grocery store, her in class, her having a whispered conference with a sketchy looking guy in the bad part of town. Ronan loves the Barns, desperately and wholeheartedly, but it is sort of low-hanging fruit, if she’s being honest, to attack a man on his secluded country estate. It’s a little tougher to grab three girls off the campus of one of the nation’s leading prep schools. There was no actual reason to get the U.S. Marshals involved. But Devin thinks just because she’s the oldest she gets to make unilateral decisions.

While their new identities are being constructed, they end up crammed into a shitty little motel room carefully scrubbed of all identifying information and guarded by Marshals on either side. The windows, adorned with bars and blackout curtains, look over an alley where someone is apparently keeping the world's greatest collection of dumpsters. The room itself isn’t much cheerier; most of the floor space is occupied by two beds and a single cot, which Ronan and Devin spend hours fighting over without getting anywhere. Martha offers to take the cot more than once, but neither of them will let her.

On day two, Ronan picks up the room phone and hears dead air. When she complains, Devin snaps, “Of  _course_ the phone’s turned off. That’s the whole  _point_ , Ronan; we can’t have any contact with anyone.”

“Maybe I just wanted to call the front desk for more towels. Or order a pizza. Am I allowed to do that, Devin, or is it part of my personal hell that I have to starve?”

Devin pinches the bridge of her nose. “We aren’t going to starve, Ronan. Please don’t be melodramatic. And you and I both know that you were going to call Gansey, which, by the way, is exactly why the phone is disconnected. Because of people like you, with no self-control, who would rather get their little sisters killed than go more than twenty-four hours without talking to their girlfriends.” 

Ronan can already tell that invoking Martha is going to be Devin's primary strategy for controlling her while they're in hiding, and she can already tell it's going to work every time. She locks herself in the bathroom, the only space where she can guarantee more than five seconds of alone time.

Her nightmares get worse, something she hadn't previously thought possible. The monsters get bigger, the voices angrier, the forest path beneath her feet bloodier. She stops sleeping after just barely escaping a dream intact. When she rolls over, her breathing frantic and uneven, she sees Martha asleep only a few feet away, and it stops feeling like a worthwhile risk.

Not sleeping means the days stretch out unbearably, but also that she struggles to track them, which is arguably a blessing. She spends less time thinking about how long they've been here, about how long they'll _be_  here.

On what could be day four or day eight or day three thousand, she's keeping herself awake by watching Martha watch TV, which entails a lot of channel flipping and little else. On the fifth sports-Family Feud-cartoon cycle, she feels herself starting to drift off. She pinches the flesh of her upper arm, hard, but it doesn't do much. She forces herself to stand, to pace back and forth in the small space between the couch and the far wall. She wants to feel something other than fear or exhaustion, and settles finally on her old favorite, impotent rage. Her cereal bowl from breakfast is still on the table, and so she tosses it, warm milk trickling onto the floor. "Why doesn't this  _bother_ you?" she demands. "This fucking—We're like rats in a  _cage_ , and all because Devin went soft."

"She doesn't want anything to happen to us." Martha's eyes widen in response to the flashy outfits worn by the WWE fighters on screen. "Besides, is this really so awful?"

" _Yes!_ " Ronan thinks about flipping the table, but deems it a step too far.

"I think it's sort of nice!" Ronan turns to stare. Martha is smiling, beatific as always. "I've missed you. Everything's different now, and we don't live together anymore, and." She shrugs. "I don't know. It's kind of like a sleepover. But with my big sisters!"

It's enough to make Ronan stop looking for things to throw that land in the sweet spot between satisfyingly destructive and apocalyptic. "I'm sorry I haven't been a better sister lately."

Martha smiles up at her. "You're an amazing sister." Devin is the only liar in their family, so Ronan knows she must mean it, impossible as that seems. "Is there any pizza left over from last night?" Martha gets up and starts to dig through the room's minifridge. As she takes a bite, the door still wide open, she adds, "You should sleep more," like it's that simple, and Ronan nods. Martha has never had to really face the ugly things in life, even now, and there's no benefit to disillusioning her.

Devin walks into the room with purpose, as if their entire world hasn't been trimmed down to the most depressing single room in existence. None of them are supposed to leave the room, but she's been disappearing for "conferences" with the Marshals at least once a day since they got here. Ronan would be infuriated by the double standard if she weren't busy thanking God for those few hours of peace. "Ronan, get off your ass. I explained to the agents in charge of our case that your live-in best friend is a girl of reasonable intelligence and unreasonable influence. I told them how much trouble she could cause them if she doesn't know you're all right, and they agreed. Apparently, she's been calling actual  _senators_." Devin sighs and drags a hand down her face. "It hasn't even been a  _week._ "

Ronan allows herself a moment to imagine Gansey bursting through the door, an avenging angel in slacks and boat shoes. "So?" she manages.

"So they're going to let you call her. Once. Briefly. Tell her you're okay and to call off all the Nancy Drewing around before she gets herself killed. Or worse, gets  _us_ killed."

They're taken out the back way and driven to a field office that looks exactly like the one they were in last time, right down to the bland agents in cheap suits, even though Ronan is completely sure they're in a different state by now, if not a different time zone. They're shown into an office that's empty but for a phone and a computer, like she's really supposed to believe the call isn't being monitored. Devin sits behind the desk and adopts a power pose, like she's fantasizing about being a U.S. Marshal and getting to tear people's lives apart. Ronan snarls, "Did you want me to take some shots for your Instagram?"

Devin's lip curls. "Just make the call so we can get out of here."

Gansey's number is the only one Ronan has memorized other than the one from the Barns. She's called it from more than enough payphones and recited it to enough desk sergeants in Henrietta's pitiful police station. She dials, shaky-fingered, the receiver pressed right up against her lips. "I wonder when that was last disinfected," Devin says.

Ronan has her mouth shaped halfway around an expletive when the ringing stops and Gansey's voice erupts in her ear. "Ronan? Ronan, is that you?" She sounds like she hasn't gotten much more sleep than Ronan in the past week, right on the edge of hysteria.

For a second, Ronan forgets herself, forgets that she needs to speak and why she ever wanted to. She finds her voice, finally, says, "It's me," and Devin immediately repeats her words in the breathy voice of a romance novel heroine. Ronan flips her off.

"Oh." There's a clattering sound, and then muffled speech, and then Gansey again, sounding more like herself. "Good, because I've been answering every unknown number that way since you disappeared, and I rather suspect I've freaked out some telemarketers. And an Oxford professor Malory referred to me. Where are you?"

She can't decide how to feel about the thought of Gansey unraveling without her. "I can't tell you. But we're all right. I guess whoever killed my dad is still out there, and Devin totally lost her shit about it. They've got us in hiding."

Gansey would probably describe herself as reasonably composed, but Ronan thinks she's really just used to things going her way. Now, faced with the reality that some things are beyond even the illusion of her control, she barely manages to hold her voice steady to ask, "Are you—scared?"

Ronan scoffs and makes herself relax her grip on the phone. "Of course not."

"Good. We're going to fix this," Gansey says, with an intensity that makes Ronan feel like she hasn't been heard, or at least not believed. "I can—I can do research. Look into your father's old contacts. And we can find a way to talk. We could get burner phones. Train homing pigeons.  _Something_."

Ronan glances at Devin, who's watching and pretending not to. She knows what she's supposed to say, that Gansey should toe the line, and what she wants to say, that Gansey should hop in the Pig and come get her. But Gansey didn't grow up the way she did, has no self-defense training except what Ronan taught her in a few distracted sessions. She goes with, "Stay out of it." Telling Gansey to mind her own business didn't work with the drinking, or the late-night exploits, and she's sure it isn't going to work now. She has a vision of Gansey with her father's wounds, and feels like she might choke. Being raised by a criminal father has left her with a healthy distrust for authority, but she finds herself saying, "Let the Feds handle it. It's probably nothing, but if the threat's real, what are you going to do about it? Stab them with an Epi-Pen? Seriously, Gansey."

" _Fine_ ," Gansey says, wounded. "I'm pretty good at finding things out, you know. But fine. Do you have—I mean, is there any sort of  _timeline_ for this sort of thing? Have they told you anything about when you'll be able to come home?"

"Not until they figure out who's been pinning threats to Devin's dorm room door with bloody knives, I guess." Gansey gasps, and Ronan rolls her eyes, talking over her. "I mean, it was pig's blood. It's basically as intimidating as mailing someone a pork chop."

"So what you're saying is that this could be it. This could be the last time we talk, ever." Gansey takes an audible breath, and then another one, too quickly. Ronan has only seen her hyperventilate once, after a near-miss while they were tracing the leyline through a particularly densely-forested area. She recognizes the high-pitched, stuttery noise coming down the line, but before she can decide what to say— _You're supposed to be the one with your shit together_  is a contender—Gansey mumbles something like, "Oh my God," and then finally takes a breath that sounds like it's made it to her lungs. "Because of my near-death experience, I've always made it a point to seize opportunities when they come to me. I know better than anyone what a—a fleeting thing life can be. I try never to assume I'll have a second chance, and I thought I was doing a good job, not taking things for granted. But now, on the phone with you, I'm realizing that I've fallen back into that trap, gotten into the habit of saying, 'Maybe tomorrow.' It might be selfish of me to do this now, with everything you have going on, but Ronan, I need to tell you—"

Ronan can't think of a single thing Gansey might want to say to her that won't make her new life unlivable. Even the best-case scenario, the wildest fantasy outcome, would be miserable because there's nothing to be  _done_ about it. The much more plausible explanation, that Gansey is trying to say as gently as possible that she isn't going to wait around indefinitely for Ronan to come back, is only slightly more intolerable. "Look, Devin's telling me my time's up. They don't usually let people do this, but I guess you were  _really_ annoying." Devin mouths  _What the fuck_ _?_  but doesn't shout that Ronan is lying to rush Gansey off the phone, which is what Ronan would do if their positions were reversed.

"Oh." Gansey swallows audibly. "Okay, of course. I wouldn't want to cause trouble for you or anything. We'll talk when you're home. That's better, anyway."

"Seriously, Ronan, wrap it up," Devin says, leaning in so that she'll be audible on the other end. It's a kindness that Ronan doesn't understand but decides not to question.

"I'll see you soon, all right?" Gansey says it like an order, like she can erase the messy realities of criminal enterprise with a bit of polite scolding. She adds in the same tone, "You're going to be fine." Softer, "I'll miss you. I already miss you."

Ronan bites down on the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood, and then a few seconds longer. "I miss you, too," she manages, and then slams the phone down before Gansey can speak again.

Devin waits until they're being escorted back to the car to say, "After  _all that whining_ —" Like she thinks having Marshals on either side of them is going to stop Ronan from clocking her. It doesn't.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s easy enough, even in this brave new world, to obtain a fifth of vodka, and much harder to find the time to drink it. Ronan doesn’t want Martha to see the version of her that comes out when she drinks. It’s barely that different from her ordinary behavior, but she’s done what she can to shield Martha from that, too. Fortunately, it hasn’t taken Martha long to make friends, even when, a month after the death of their father, they’ve been dropped into some crappy apartment with too many roaches and not enough bedrooms.
> 
> Ronan forgets to close the door to her room, which means she can hear Devin’s entrance, the sound of plastic bags hitting linoleum that means she’s been grocery shopping and will soon call for Ronan's assistance. She takes another swig just as Devin snaps, right on schedule, “It wouldn’t kill you to help me every once in a while.”
> 
> “It might.” Ronan means to cap this with, “Maybe that’s what did in Dad,” but she chokes on the words. It’s the definition of _too soon_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for homophobic slurs & bullying, and alcohol abuse.

Devin fits in at their new school like it's no trouble at all. She goes from blazers and pantyhose to button-ups tucked into her crisply-ironed jeans, and no one seems to mind that even this is a bit much for public school; she has a collection of socially-advantageous boys sniffing after her by the end of second period. Martha falls in with the girls' wrestling team like she was born for it. That leaves Ronan alone, resolutely not blending. No one at Aglionby ever messed with her–not counting Kavinsky, who was always high and genuinely might have committed patricide and is therefore in a category all her own. So it's a surprise how many girls take her newness and her accent and her shaved head as a challenge. And not even tough-looking girls, not girls who might reasonably think they could beat her. Wispy girls with fake tans and ponytails pulled tight. _Cheerleaders_ , like when Ronan left Henrietta, she somehow got transported into the worst type of teen movie.

She hears "dyke" whispered behind her back a dozen times before she turns around and slams someone's face into a locker. She thinks it's the ringleader whose hair she has tangled between her fingers, but she can't say for certain. It seems, to her, completely proportionate, but judging by the time she spends sitting in a plastic bucket chair waiting for Devin to excuse herself from AP Gov and sign off on her suspension, no one else agrees.

Devin bursts into the office on just the wrong side of harried. She straightens her hair, smooths her shirt against her stomach, and then leans in so that only Ronan will hear when she whispers, "Keep your stupid mouth shut and try not to look like such a raging asshole." Which would ordinarily make Ronan want to pick a big, terrible fight, but she's tired, and she doesn't have anything to say, either in her own defense or just for the hell of it. She slumps her way into the principal's inner sanctum and listens while Devin explains about what a _hard time_ she's having. _After everything that happened with our parents_ , she says, over and over, enough that Ronan almost wishes she'd paid attention to what their backstory is meant to be.

No one asks her if she had a reason, not even rhetorically, which suits her just fine. They just negotiate like she isn't even there, like she's nothing but a particularly troubling section of wallpaper. Devin talks the principal down to a single day out and a week of in-school suspension. She waits until they're pulling out of the school parking lot—they've downgraded to a single uninspired sedan—to drop the concerned older sister act.

"What were you _thinking_? This is day one, Ronan, are you kidding me?" Ronan doesn't say anything. "Do you understand what happens if you get kicked out? We get moved _again._  Is that what you want?" Devin bangs her hand against the steering wheel, repeats, "Is it?"

"Fuck off." Ronan wonders if she could get her seatbelt unbuckled and dive out the door before Devin could stop her. They're in a residential zone and Devin is conspicuously going five under; it probably wouldn't even hurt.

She's almost talked herself into it, fingers inching toward the handle, when Devin says, "I know you aren't stupid, Ronan. I know, despite every decision you've made in recent memory, that you're actually a reasonably intelligent person. So again, what were you thinking?"

Ronan wouldn't say anything if she were getting anything close to a decent amount of sleep. If she weren't exhausted, and lonely, and thinking of her mother all by herself in a big house that was warm once. She jiggles the handle a couple times, but Devin has the child lock turned on. "That's what happens when you call someone a dyke."

Devin's hands tighten on the wheel, which Ronan figures is probably just about her _language_ or something equally stupid. "If you can't learn to let this stuff roll off your back, you're going to have a very difficult life."

Ronan figures if she punches Devin now, with all her strength, they'll go careening off the road and probably die. She can't decide whether it's worth it. "Don’t get mad," Devin says, as if she can read Ronan's mind. "I'm not saying what she said was all right. Of course it wasn't. That's not up for debate. But you can't control what other people do, only your reactions." Their medicine cabinet is full of prescription sleeping pills, but the bags under Devin's eyes are stark. "Do you understand what I’m saying?"

Ronan burrows down into her seat. She wishes she could disappear. She wishes Martha hadn't conjured a fresh social circle out of thin air and made plans to go to the mall after school. She wishes she had fewer vulnerabilities, or at least less obvious ones.

When she next looks up, Devin is pulling into a parking spot at the school with exaggerated care. "What," Ronan says, "the _fuck_."

"You and I are going to talk to Ms. Johnson again, and you're going to tell her what actually happened. You'll still be suspended, obviously, but that girl should get a detention out of it, at least. The administration takes this kind of thing seriously. I did my research."

Ronan wants to say, " _Why?_ " very loudly and very rudely, but she figures Devin might actually answer, and then she _will_ have to run them off the road next time, so it's better to keep her mouth shut, at least on that front. She says instead, "That isn't going to happen."

Devin is already halfway out of the car, with the confidence of someone used to being obeyed. It's a strange look on her. "Why not?"

"Because I handled it. And I don't even _care,_  anyway." Ronan slumps even lower than before, feeling conspicuously young.

"Which is why you tried to make your classmate eat her combination lock." Devin watches her through the car's open door, one hand on the hood. "Look, Ronan, I meant what I said back in the office." Ronan stares at her blankly, and she sighs. "I _said_ that this hasn't been easy. That some acting out is understandable. But—" She pauses, looking very nearly kind, and continues quietly, "I really need you to pull it the fuck together. Do you understand me? This is neither the time nor the place."

Ronan buckled her seatbelt when she got into the car, before Devin could so much as scold her about it. She knew it was a mistake as she did it, the sort of confidence-building concession that could only make Devin more insufferable. She was trying for practicality: the faster Devin started the car, the faster they’d be _out_ of the car and back at the apartment, where Ronan could slam dishes until they broke and blare the angriest, most jaw-clenching music she could find. It was a solid theory, but it failed to take into account basically everything about Devin’s god-awful, overbearing personality. Now just the act of undoing her seatbelt will cost her the element of surprise. She eyes the distance between them, considers the give of the belt, and then lunges. She gets a handful of Devin's hair in her fist and yanks as hard as she can, figuring it will either come out or give her the satisfaction of honking the horn with Devin's face.

Before Niall died, Ronan and Devin were about evenly matched. After, they were still evenly matched, but Ronan had the advantage of being 100% willing to scratch out an eye. She still has that, but she hasn't been sleeping and she hasn't been eating and her anger has lost a lot of its comforting force.

Which is how Devin ends up getting her in a headlock, a loss that's embarrassing enough on its own and made infinitely more so by the fact that they're still parked in front of their new school. Devin applies just enough pressure to not-quite cut off Ronan's airway and speaks directly into her ear. "I need you to understand the situation we are in. Dad's dead, but you aren’t, despite your best efforts. I want to keep it that way, but if you really don't, you need to leave instead of dragging us down with you. And it’s not like you can go back to Henrietta, so you need to choose: you can stay here, where you at least have Martha, or you can be alone. And I'm not explaining it to her, either; you can be the one to look her in the eye and tell her you'd rather be a self-destructive little fuck than support her." For just a second, Ronan can't breathe, even though Devin's grip has relaxed to the point that she could break free if she really wanted to. It's an awful thought, letting Martha down more than she already has. "Do you understand me?"

Ronan spits in Devin’s face, but she doesn’t flinch, or even wipe it off. Ronan might as well have licked a statue. "You think you're tough, that you're making some kind of point. You aren't. You're just a brat who misses her daddy."

Ronan brings her head up and into Devin's with enough force Devin’s eyes unfocus and her hands fall away. She reaches behind her and grasps for the handle, then takes off.

But Devin is right. Not about most of it, but Ronan can't go back to Henrietta, and she can't leave Martha with no guidance except a soul-sucking future bureaucrat. She’s stuck.

 

The good thing about having knocked out a tooth on her first day is that people mostly leave Ronan alone afterward. She keeps to herself, penned in by Devin’s constant reminders that blowing their covers would mean, at best, another move, and at worst, Martha getting hurt.

While she’s brooding at a table in the very back of the cafeteria, Devin slides into the seat across from her, saying as she does, “If you make a scene, you could get Martha killed.”

Ronan drops the shitty, half-frozen pizza she'd been about to slam into Devin’s face and slumps back down. “That’s going to stop working eventually, you know.”

Devin doesn’t look away from the apple she’s cutting the brown spots off of. “No, it isn’t.” She’s right, infuriatingly so. Ronan has been nursing the theory that Devin made this whole thing up just so she could have an undefeatable trump card. Devin looks down at what's left of her apple, which is practically just core, and says, “They call this food?” Which is exactly what Ronan has been thinking since she was first handed her tray of industrial waste, and she’s so incensed about being in agreement with Devin that she stabs her spork through the foil lid of her fruit cup, takes a huge bite, and chews with her mouth open. Devin looks around as if she's hoping someone else will materialize to lecture Ronan about her bad table manners. No one does, and she sighs. “You’re disgusting.”

“’Make the best of it,’” Ronan mimics, shoveling more of the slop into her mouth as she does, so that every unnaturally high-pitched word treats Devin to fluorescent orange. “Isn’t that what you keep telling me? Yeah, our lives are ruined and we’re stuck in this shithole with no end in sight, but complaining isn’t going to do anything?”

Devin shrugs and pops one of the previously separated chunks of fruit into her mouth, and Ronan realizes she’s been played. She’s been on an unofficial sort of hunger strike called profound and unending misery, and Devin has been trying to goad her into a full meal for days. There’s nothing to be done about it now, and what she’s already had, food-adjacent as it may be, has awakened something in her she’d thought might have been buried with her father, so she keeps eating. Devin smiles, and it seems a bit less smug than Ronan would have expected, so of course she has to ruin it. “You’re not the only one suffering, Ronan.”

Ronan thinks idly of people in prison, who can make shivs out of anything. “I never fucking said that.”

“You didn’t have to; your actions are communicating your victim complex well enough. We’re all in the exact same situation.”

“Except that Dad loved me best, and Mom loved Martha best, so you didn’t actually lose what we did.”

Ronan hadn’t known Devin could cry. She didn’t even at the funeral, or when the will was read, or when she found a bloody knife stuck in her door. Now she tears up so suddenly that it’s like a dam crumbling. "You. Are _such_. An asshole.” Perpetually orderly, Devin tries to take her tray with her when she storms off, but the Styrofoam cracks under her trembling fingers, and her milk carton explodes when it makes contact with the floor.

“So much for not making a scene!” Ronan calls after her, for want of anything else to do.

Outbursts aren’t as uncommon here as Devin likes to pretend, and the students who turned to look lose interest as soon as they figure out that Ronan isn’t going to do anything else to entertain them. She leaves before someone can come over and try to make her clean up Devin’s mess. She isn’t going to, of course, but she’s taken Devin’s admonitions more seriously than she’s pretending to, and it’s better to avoid the inevitable confrontation.

When she gets to the apartment after school, Martha is sprawled out on her bed messing with her DS, but she puts it down at the sound of the door closing. “What did you do to Devin?” she asks, looking for all the world like a kicked puppy.

“What’d she say I did?” Ronan doesn’t want to admit to more than she has to, annoyed by the prospect of Devin ratting her out and by the sharp, unfamiliar sting of guilt. She throws her bag to the floor and kicks her shoes off in the doorway. Devin has turned very mom-ish, in a way even Aurora wasn’t, scolding Ronan for leaving her belongings “where anyone could trip and snap her neck” and tracking Martha’s gaming time. She’s less than a week from demanding to check their homework. Ronan really hopes they’re gone before progress reports come out, or Devin might try to ground her.

Martha props herself up on her elbows. She’s wearing a shirt proclaiming her pride in their new school. “She didn’t say anything, but she was upset.”

“Because there’s nothing upsetting in her life except me, right?” Ronan isn’t ordinarily sarcastic with Martha, and she regrets it immediately.

“You should say you're sorry,” Martha says, voice neutral as she returns to her game.

Ronan actually means to do it, or at least something close. The words "I'm sorry" are basically never going to come out of her mouth, but she can see that the line was somewhere well back from where she landed. She gets herself psyched up for some kind of gesture, like maybe doing her dishes or correcting Martha’s math homework. Devin doesn’t get home until practically eleven, which is infuriating because they only have the one car now, and so Ronan is irritated and tired-but-not-sleepy and nauseous from her stomach’s creaky expansion after not getting enough for so long. When Devin is the normal amount cold to her, she decides to consider herself off the hook. Devin had it coming, after all.

 

It’s easy enough, even in this brave new world, to obtain a fifth of vodka, and much harder to find the time to drink it. Ronan doesn’t want Martha to see the version of her that comes out when she drinks. It’s barely that different from her ordinary behavior, but she’s done what she can to shield Martha from that, too. Fortunately, it hasn’t taken Martha long to make friends, even when, a month after the death of their father, they’ve been dropped into some crappy apartment with too many roaches and not enough bedrooms.

Ronan forgets to close the door to her room, which means she can hear Devin’s entrance, the sound of plastic bags hitting linoleum that means she’s been grocery shopping and will soon call for Ronan's assistance. She takes another swig just as Devin snaps, right on schedule, “It wouldn’t _kill_ you to help me every once in a while.”

“It might.” Ronan means to cap this with, “Maybe that’s what did in Dad,” but she chokes on the words. It’s the definition of _too soon._

“Well,” Devin says. She barely needs to project, that’s how small their apartment is. The hum of their decade-old refrigerator harmonizes with her speech. “Look, I’ve been thinking. You should do some kind of extracurricular. It would probably be good for you, and anyone looking for us would be immediately thrown off the scent by you willingly associating with anyone other than your precious Gansey. Debate, maybe? Work off some of that excessive contrariness?”

“Fuck you.” Vodka spills down the front of Ronan’s shirt, and Devin appears in the doorway, drawn to the scent of self-destruction like the world’s most overbearing bloodhound. She takes a long breath and then leaves again, her loafers brushing against the floor as she paces around their combination dining-living room. She’s been nearly impossible to goad into fights since they were relocated. She sat them down the first night, or she sat down, and Martha sat down, and Ronan loomed over them glowering, and Devin said that they were all alone, and that the stakes were too high to be “engaging in petty bullshit.” It was directed solely at Ronan, but she included Martha to introduce some shame to the proceedings. It worked, which was annoying. Ronan isn’t opposed to throwing the first punch, not by any means, but the rivalry isn't as engaging if she has to do it every time.

“Did you have a nice stroll?” Ronan asks when Devin returns, looking no calmer but slightly more contained.

“Do you know how hard it was to keep from being split up?” Devin sounds like each word is being torn from somewhere deep inside her. “Do you know how many people I had to bribe to be declared fit to be your guardian in _witness protection_? If you get caught breaking the law, they’re going to split us all up. Is that what you want?”

Ronan looks Devin over carefully. She looks tired, like someone took the version of her that existed in Henrietta and ran it through an industrial dryer a few times. It very nearly makes Ronan feel bad for her, an emotion she has little interest in exploring.

“Move over.” Devin pushes her way onto Ronan’s twin bed so that they’re sitting side-by-side. She still has an infuriating half-inch on Ronan, who flexes her feet until her toes break an imaginary finish line. She hasn’t been this close to Devin since they were too young to insist on having Martha between them in the car or at church. “I hope you spilled as much of this as it smells like you did.” Devin squints at the scant inches left in the bottle. “Or you’re going to die.” Before Ronan can snap that she knows how to handle her liquor, Devin puts the bottle to her lips and takes a long drink. She swallows without flinching, though Ronan got the cheap stuff, the absolute bottom-shelf, poison-masquerading-as-a-potable stuff. It’s impressive, though she would never admit it.

"Stay here," Devin says after she wipes her mouth, as if Ronan is in any state to go somewhere else. If she were even a bit closer to sober, she’d climb out the window just to make a point. Devin disappears to the kitchen and returns with Perrier, lemon juice, and two glasses full of ice. Ronan wants to say that it ruins the self-destructive feel of drinking vodka straight from the bottle at five p.m., but finds that she doesn’t care enough to bother. She accepts the drink Devin pours her and downs half of it in one go. “So,” she says, louder than she means to. “What finally got you to unclench?”

Devin stares into her glass like a crystal ball. "I don't want to fight," she says after a long silence. "For once, okay, I don't want to fight. Dammit, Ronan, don't you ever get tired? So just. You don't be you, and I won't be me, and no one has to know, okay?"

Officially, no, Ronan doesn't ever get tired. She is absolutely always spoiling for a fight, a fight she'll win, thank you very much. Unofficially, to be admitted only in the privacy of her own mind and usually not even then, yes, obviously, she's so viscerally goddamn exhausted that she can feel it in her bones. Deeper than her bones, in the very core of her. But there just isn't a way out, not really. Wishing isn't going to make her father any less dead, her mother any less comatose, her older sister any less of a shit. She'd have to be stupid to be anything other than impotent rage shaped into a roughly human form.

But there's something in Devin's voice, some raw need Ronan can't remember having heard from her. And the drinks are good, arguably, and strong, objectively, so she’s feeling about as warmly toward Devin as she's capable of. She grunts out something that could pass for agreement if the listener were really into self-deception, and Devin, who’s apparently just as happy lying to herself as she is to others, sighs, “ _Thank you_.” She takes a sip, raises an eyebrow, and adds, “Was that so hard?”

Ronan looks at her, at her mostly-full glass and her impeccably-white shirt, and shoves her off the bed.


End file.
